


the wrong end of a very long tunnel

by taizi



Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: Developing Friendships, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Pre-Canon, Self-Worth Issues, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:54:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23062792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taizi/pseuds/taizi
Summary: And Sammy could sayactually—Do you have a minute?Can I tell you something?But instead he drives them down the mountain, arguing about breakfast, taking care on the turns. Ben’s glasses are smudged and his smile is lopsided and bright. Sammy has never been able to protect anyone but himself, but he drives differently when Ben is in the car.
Relationships: Ben Arnold & Sammy Stevens, Sammy Stevens/Jack Wright
Comments: 8
Kudos: 128





	the wrong end of a very long tunnel

**Author's Note:**

> im only on episode 78 but i love sammy so much

> _and you wanted an adventure, so i said have an adventure_

The car smells like Jack. He always forgot body spray on his mad rush out the door in the morning so he took to keeping a can in the glovebox. Sammy sits in the driver’s seat with a death grip on the steering wheel, his knuckles standing out like a string of pearls. In the passenger seat is the packed bag he found by the front door months ago. 

It was months ago. It took that long to negotiate a way out of their contract at the station. And maybe Sammy was hoping for a miracle, hoping for a late-night phone call or the sound of a key in the lock. If he waited a little longer, dragged his feet, Jack would make his own way home. 

But Sammy is sitting in a car that smells like Jack, with a bag in the passenger seat where his boyfriend should be, and his phone in the cup holder with the GPS waiting on his first move. 

It’s a hard move to make. Sammy is a coward. He wants to go back inside. Back into their house, even though the mail is on hold and the gas and water has been shut off. Back into the life he and Jack built with each other, for each other. 

But this is the only way back. Leaving now is the only way to go back home. 

Jack, Sammy thinks. 

He presses the clutch and shifts into first gear. He doesn’t slow down until the fuel gauge is on empty, seven hundred miles away. Then he pulls into the first gas station off the interstate and has a quiet panic attack. 

It’s only for his benefit that it’s quiet, really. To keep some semblance of control. He could have made a scene if he wanted to. It’s one o’clock in the morning in the Middle of Nowhere, Northern Oregon, and Sammy is alone. He could fall to the ground and scream and be long gone before some unfortunate morning employee came in and checked the CCTV. 

Jack, he thinks. He doesn’t scream. He gets out to pump gas. 

> _i don’t really blame you for being dead but you can’t have your sweater back_

  
  
  


His apartment isn’t quite ready for him. The real estate market isn’t exactly booming in King Falls, but the landlady wants a chance to clean the carpets. The last tenant had cats. So Sammy has a handy excuse to stop in at the only motel for a hundred miles, to smile as he introduces himself as the new radio personality, make small talk, ask about the town. It’s very scenic, the drive up was beautiful. You must get a lot of tourists when the weather’s nice. Have you seen any new faces around here lately? Anyone new come through?

No, the grizzled receptionist said, just you.

The motel room smells like stale cigarette smoke and mold. The walls are an ugly puce with a wainscot that might once have been white. The comforter on the bed is stiff and over-starched. Sammy sits down on it with Jack’s bag. He didn’t bring any of his own things in from the car. He falls asleep with his nose pressed into the collar of one of Jack's shirts. It's the only way he can fall asleep.

It’s easy enough to assimilate into town. Easy enough to adopt a persona that would assimilate into town. He could play the aggressive shock jock well enough for work, but he felt like an understudy in a role that wasn’t really meant for him. Felt like being back in high school and taking a friend from homeroom to the prom because she was a girl who understood him and the pictures would be what their parents expected. 

Sammy has always known how to be what people expected. He’s always known how to play his cards close. There's too much at stake to get sloppy now. 

Ben Arnold is a bright, lively person. King Falls is home to him. He knows the ins and outs of every weird and unsettling corner. It’s on the tip of Sammy’s tongue to ask— hey, where would the best place be to start looking for a missing person? Can you give me a reference number for the paranormal abductions section of the local library? The love of my life is gone and your creepy, hungry hometown is to blame, so tell me, Ben, what does it do with the people it eats? Where does it keep its food? 

Sammy doesn’t know how to have that conversation without sounding insane. Without _going_ insane. So he doesn’t have it. 

He’ll do this on his own. 

Jack’s shirts don’t smell like Jack anymore, but there's still a can of body spray in the glovebox. Sammy only uses it sparingly, when he's afraid he's forgotten what it smells like. 

On a rainy morning, when Sammy is giving Ben a lift home from the station because they drove in together the night before, he points Ben toward the glovebox for some napkins to dry his glasses with. After a moment of rooting around, Ben makes a suspect little “ooh” sound— his curiosity is a monster Sammy is doing his _very_ best to tame— and comes out with the body spray. 

“Don’t,” Sammy says. It comes out quick, but not sharp, and Ben’s head tilt is confused, but not hurt. “Just don’t want to waste it,” Sammy adds with an easy smile, eyes on the road. He puts out a hand for it and Ben surrenders it without a fight. It’s just body spray, it’s not worth the conversation they're having about it. “It’s hard to find.”

“It says Bath & Body Works on the sticker,” Ben laughs, "but whatever, weirdo.”

And Sammy could say _actually—_

_Do you have a minute?_

_Can I tell you something?_

But instead he drives them down the mountain, arguing about breakfast, taking care on the turns. Ben’s glasses are smudged and his smile is lopsided and bright. Sammy has never been able to protect anyone but himself, but he drives differently when Ben is in the car. 

> _you are a fever i am learning to live with, and everything is happening at the wrong end of a very long tunnel_

It doesn't feel right to not want to be at his apartment, pouring over the complicated notes Jack left behind that Sammy doesn't know how to read, smoothing out a wrinkled map with half a route traced in blue pen and pretending like this time he’ll see something there he didn't notice before, this time he'll figure it out. 

But the longer Sammy spends here, the closer he comes to admitting what a part of him knew all along. 

He isn’t getting Jack back. He isn't going home again. Home got taken away, home is gone. 

“Havin' a rough night, are we, bud?" Ron asks. Sammy doesn’t know where he came from.

He's laying on his back across the hood of his car, a bottle of liquor clutched in hand. It’s a clear night, and there’s hardly any light pollution out on the edge of town. Maybe that's why Sammy drove out here. Maybe he just wanted to look up and see something beautiful in this godforsaken place. It's half past one in the morning, and by now Sammy would be deep in Sweetzer Forest, doing his usual pointless run around before booking it up to the station for the show, always a few minutes late. 

But at midnight on the dot, his phone helpfully reminded him of Jack's birthday. He checked the notification at a red light. Then he pulled into the parking lot on his immediate right and got out of the car, because he didn’t trust himself to drive at that point. The only 24 hour convenience store was a few blocks away. He bought a half gallon of whatever was nearest the door. 

“I'm fine,” Sammy says. He's pretty sure he says it. It's so practiced by now that he can’t imagine he would have said anything else.

A calloused hand works the bottle out of Sammy’s fist. Ron leans his hip against the side of the car and takes a swallow. The first drink had made Sammy cough, but Ron’s face doesn’t change. 

“Shelled out for the good stuff tonight. Special occasion?”

“Yes,” Sammy says firmly.

Of course it’s special. Jack’s birthday is always special. They go out to dinner and they get extraordinarily drunk and they stumble home together and climb into bed. Jack is warm and solid, and he lays an arm across Sammy’s waist in a way that makes Sammy feel— held. Jack makes him feel held.

And Sammy isn’t the type of person who could make someone feel like that about him, but he tries. He makes breakfast, he remembers how Jack takes his coffee and how he likes his eggs, and hopes it at least comes close. 

“I forgot what day it was,” Sammy goes on, and then he starts crying. 

He’ll blame the drinks later. He’ll say he just can’t hold his alcohol. It’ll be sort of a running joke after this. Sammy never lives it down. 

But for now, the driver’s side door pops open, and the cabin light goes on, and the warning chime starts up because the keys are still in the ignition. Ron roots around for a minute and then returns to Sammy with his phone and a napkin from Paulie’s. 

Sammy takes the napkin, not sure what he’s supposed to do with it. Ron asks for his PIN, and Sammy tells him, “It’s today.” Ron takes his wrist and directs the hand with the napkin in it up to his face. 

Oh, Sammy thinks, and wipes his eyes while Ron makes a call. 

Some interminable amount of time later, the car rocks a bit as Ben climbs up next to him on the hood. He scoots around until he and Sammy are shoulder-to-shoulder, marooned in a parking lot under a staggering array of stars. 

“I'm playing a Best-Of compilation,” Ben tells him. “I was working on it for your anniversary, but I’ll come up with something even better by then.” He turns his head, glasses going crooked and pressing into the bridge of his nose. Beneath a mop of dark curls, his eyes are familiar. People don’t usually look at Sammy like that. He’s not sure what it means. “Come on, dude. Come with me. Let’s ditch your car for the night, okay?”

He winds up on Ben’s couch, bundled under the comforter from Ben’s bed _._ Ben finds Legally Blonde on TV and stays up to watch it with him. Sammy falls asleep in the first ten minutes.

He dreams of Jack, but for once it isn’t a nightmare. He doesn’t wake up gasping. He dreams of Jack’s face, of his hands, of his smile in the morning. He’s awake between one breath and the next, a slow rising up out of the dark. 

Someone is singing ABBA in the kitchen, where there is the distinct smell of breakfast burning. 

“What in the fresh hell are you doing in there?” Sammy croaks. 

“Hey, look who’s up! You look fresh as a daisy, Sammy.” Ben’s obnoxious good cheer seems louder than usual, pounding between Sammy’s ears like a hammer, but that might just be the dehydration talking. "Come and eat.”

This isn’t why Sammy came to King Falls. This isn’t what he’s supposed to be doing. He’s harboring secrets and taking advantage.

But there’s a plate of lopsided eggs and toast and slightly blackened bacon in front of Sammy, and a cup of coffee and the caramel vanilla creamer he’s taken a liking to that Ben keeps stocked in the station. The kitchen is warm, and comfortable, and bright with the sunlight coming through the window above the sink. 

“Is it okay?” Ben asks, sitting across from him. “You always get your eggs over easy at Rose’s.”

Sammy pulls the hair out of his face with the hair-tie on his wrist. The end result makes Ben laugh, and Sammy picks up his fork. 

“Of course it is, Ben. You’re the best.”

The first bite tastes like guilt. The second one tastes like way too much butter. The third one tastes like home.

> _you can sleep now, you said. you can sleep now. you said that. i had a dream where you said that_

**Author's Note:**

> —richard siken, _straw house, straw dog_
> 
> sammy's love language is cooking and making his friends wear their seatbelts


End file.
